291. HISTORY ON ERECTION STREET

HISTORY ON
ERECTION STREET
I was standing once more at the
corner of Bedford and Barrow, reading
the sign on the building's edge. All
those things - people, movements, places.
The material of my life - stories I
knew so well. The spit of a horse
was heard behind me, and then the
torrent of its piss upon the ground.
The old, hard-packed dirt was worn
to a coarse frazzle - milkmen, wagons,
horses and whores. The ancient revolution
of the proletariat was once just like this, here.
-
Everything now is destabilized. Red
paint on the windows where the edging
used to be. Varnish on the ledges - dried out,
peeling and old. Hippolyte Havel, Polly Holladay
and Mabel Dodge. Lincoln Steffens. Hutch Hapgood.
Right there, God damn it, I knew all those people.
Charlotte Taylor and Harold Brubaker too.
-
Espied through the glass by the looking-glass eye.
Soiled and burned, wasted and washed, the
strangers never stopped coming. They fucked like
wild animals, and drank just the same. We talked
issues until wee morning came. Politics and philosophy,
and rant and the future - which is now, of course.
Son of a bitch, it really DID arrive!